Ode to a baseball leftie with a broken left arm

My advice to my child: Live a passionate life

Well, while Bryant Family Motto Number 2 is "No more ER visits," saying so doesn't always make it true.

All afternoon today, while you and I once again sat in another emergency room waiting on an orthopaedic surgeon to look at your precious left arm, I kept hearing the song Thomas the Tank engine once sang to you by way of video when you were a toddler, accidents do happen now and again.

It was an accident. Accidents and unexpected injuries happen while you are out pursuing your dreams and living a passionate life.

You love sports and we knew that sooner or later you might get dinged up pursuing one sport or another. It's happened before. As you know, this broken arm isn't our first rodeo (hence the development of family motto number 2).

Yeah, it's pretty stinky that on the very last play of your first football game in full pads you had to be gang tackled in the left arm. You were just a hair away from going injury free. Instead, now your left arm is wrapped armpit to fingertip in ace bandage and splint with a hairline fracture.

Your heart is broken and so is mine.

The good news is that you play team sports and teams rally around their injured teammates. And man, have you developed a team. Friends, teammates, and coaches are already calling. Aunts, uncles and cousins. Grandmothers, grandfathers. Mom and Dad. We all love you and wish you the best. We're here to cheer you up when you feel low, and we all want you on the sidelines cheering, supporting and standing beside the teams you love -- the Redskins, the Cubs -- even though you can't get in the game right now.

Yes, it stinks that you won't pitch for the Cubs this season and will have to rehab that monster left arm again. Here's the thing I know you find hard to believe right now, you'll be all the better and stronger for it. Experience teaches us something and I have no doubt that being the competitor, smart as a whip kid and great sport that you are that you will learn from this experience and use your time on the sidelines to your advantage. You always do.

If nothing else is learned, know that your team is infinitely proud of you for not being a wall-flower. We love how you get out there and take on the world no matter what, when or how. That's what it's all about. Soaking it all in, figuratively hitting it out of the park and experiencing the world -- leaving nothing undone. It's what I want for every kid, but especially the ones I call my own.